Background:
Egypt is suffering from population problem mainly due to high fertility and low birth control. During the last 25 years, Egypt has made an impressive progress towards its population policy goals. From 1 980 – 2005, Egypt had more than doubled its contraceptive use (from 24% to 59%). But despite this progress, there are differences in contraceptive use among different geographic areas of Egypt.
Fertility rates are highest in Upper Egypt (3.7 births) and lowest in the Urban Governorates 1 . On the other hand, contraception use rates were 60% or higher in all of the Urban Governorates and in the some Governorates in Lower Egypt. Nationally, Assiut and Sohag Governorates recorded the lowest levels of contraceptive use, 37.9% and 32.7% respectively. Previous researches on women and family planning have focused on how various aspects of women's lives predict their use of family planning.
Objectives:
In this piece of work, we looked at neglected aspect –though important¬ that might reverses the equation when you find out other factors or determinants that would influence family planning use by focusing on husband’s role in family planning decision making.
Main question:
What are the determinants or predictors that may affect family planning decision in Egypt?
Methodology:
Secondary analytical study based on Egypt Demographic Health Survey 2008 data set of currently married women aged 1 5¬49 years (N=1 5396). Data was analyzed using SPSS (version 1 6). Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations were computed. The suitable tests of significance were chosen as Chi square, t¬test, ANOVA, logistic regression analysis…etc . The 5% was chosen as a level of significance
Results:
The total numbers of currently married women aged 1 5 – 49 was 1 5396. The mean age of respondents at the time of interview was 33.96 years while that for their partners was 41 .04 years which ranged from 1 5 ¬95 years. The average number of children ever borne was 3.1 8 with an average number of living children 3.0 and average number of sons at the home of 1 .47. Respondent’s education level actively affected modern family planning methods use as those with higher education levels used modern family planning methods more frequent (63.4%) whereas those with lower levels of education were more likely to use no contraceptive methods at all (44.7%) and this difference was statistically significant(P =0.000).
About two thirds of those didn’t use family planning methods at the time of interview were residing rural areas. A similar percentage of those
residing urban areas used modern contraceptive methods and this difference was statistically significant (P =0.000). We found significant inverse relationship between wealth quintiles and using no family planning methods and vice versa with modern contraceptive use (P =0.000).
Analyzing family planning use by age groups we found a statistical significant difference between different age groups regarding modern family planning as it variably peaks at age groups 25¬44 years(P =0.000). It was found that contact with health team (visiting the health facility or being visited by health worker) had statistically positive effect on using modern family planning methods (P =0.000 & P=0.004 respectively).There was a significant strong positive association between not working and non¬using family planning methods as the majority (84.2%) of non users were not working(P =0.01 2). The mean number of sons at home significantly affected husband’s desire for more children where the higher the mean number of sons at home the less husband desire for more children (P =0.004). Partner’s educational level played a significant role in family planning use where 47.6% of non educated partners’ wives did not use family planning methods compared to about two thirds (63.7%) of highly educated partners’ wives used family planning methods (P =0.000).Participation in household decisions was positively and significantly associated with use of modern family planning methods in contrast to those who didn’t participate were more likely not to use modern family planning (63.5% &78.7% respectively) (P =0.000). Several trials of logistic regression analysis were done, the significant predictors for modern family planning use were her sharing in family planning decision, number of living children and respondent’s current age (P=< 0.05). The overall prediction of the model was 8.4 % with an overall percentage of 95.3%.
Conclusion:
Respondent’s sharing in family planning decision was the strongest predictor followed by number of living children, then respondent current age.